Jim Miller on Politics

Pseudo-Random Thoughts

Pollsters And Party ID: Yesterday, the anti-Bush organization
MoveOn took out a full page ad in the New York Times to complain about the
Gallup poll.
MoveOn complained that there were too many Republicans in the Gallup's sample, and that its
results were biased against Kerry. (And they had a particularly nasty explanation for
Gallup's motive in doing a biased poll, which I will get to at the end of this post.).
These ads are not cheap; yesterday I saw the price of a full page ad given at $68,000, which is
expensive even for a wealthy group like MoveOn.

Why did they spend the money on this ad? Rather than, for instance, using it for scholarships
for poor kids? Presumably because they believe in a bandwagon theory, the idea that the
news that one candidate is ahead persuades others to support him. There may be some
truth to bandwagon theories in primaries, but I have seen no evidence that voters decide that way in
general elections. &nbsp(Although there is a small tendency for voters to claim they voted for the
winner after the election, when they hadn't.)

So their money was wasted, almost certainly, but that doesn't mean their criticisms of Gallup were
wrong. Did Gallup's recent results have too many Republicans in them? Probably not,
but to understand that you must know an interesting detail about Gallup's polling procedures and
understand something about a long term controversy in political science. (I'll try to make
the discussion of the second as palatable as possible.)

When I asked Frank Newport at Gallup about that [the high number of Democrats in a 2003 poll],
he said that they asked the Party ID question at the end of the survey, after all of the other
questions, such as ones about Bush's approval rating, who the respondents intend to vote for, etc.
Newport told me that how Bush is doing will effect whether people identify themselves as a Republican
or Democrat. When respondents perceive that Bush isn't doing well, more of them identify
themselves as a Democrat. Gallup treats Party ID this way because it believes that Party ID
is relatively fluid.

If Gallup asked the party ID question at the beginning, they would get different results. I would
expect that it would be more stable and less influenced by election choices. (You
can see just how much party ID has varied in Gallup's polls this year
here.)

Newport's last statement, that Party ID is "relatively fluid" would have shocked most students of
American politics forty years ago. Here's how a very influential book,
The American Voter
begins chapter 5, "The Impact of Party Identification".

A general observation about the political behavior of Americans is that their partisan preferences
show great stability between elections.

Party ID, the authors thought, changed rarely and even then only under the impact of great
events, such as the Great Depression. There were good reasons for them to think it was
stable — at least when they did their work, in the 1950s. Whether their conclusion was
right then, it no longer is. There is
conclusive evidence that
party ID can change rapidly and without the impact of great events.

Party identification is not a particularly stable attitude — many people go back and forth on how
they regard themselves. When respondents are surveyed and then re-interviewed at a later date,
substantial minorities give different answers. In November 2000, after the presidential election,
Pew re-interviewed 1,113 voters who had participated in a survey in September of that year. In
the period between the surveys, 18% of voters answered the party affiliation question differently
than they had just two months earlier. And not much time needs to pass in order to see this
sort of instability. In the 1988 post-election study, voters were called back less than three
weeks after the initial contact, and fully 16% changed party labels in that time.

As you can see from the tables, the voters do not often jump from being a Democrat to being a
Republican or vice versa, but they do move, easily, from a party to being independent, or in the
other direction. Every American may, to paraphrase the
Gilbert and Sullivan song,
be born a Democrat or Republican, but they don't necessarily stay what they were born or even what
they were last week.

That said, you can also see that the totals for a party do tend toward long term
stability. Permanent changes generally take time. The number of Republicans jumped
sharply when Saddam was captured, fell during the Democratic nomination struggle, and has risen
recently. My guess, as I have said before, is that its equilibrium level is about one
third of the voters. And I think the equilibrium levels for Democrats and independents
are about the same.

Some pollsters, notably Zogby, try to "correct" their polls by weighting them by party. From
what I can tell, it is not certain that this approach will give more accurate answers. It may
smooth out some of the bumps from temporary shifts in party ID, but it may cover up real changes
during a campaign. If a pollster did use weighting by party, they would have to ask the party
ID question before they asked the candidate choice question.

There is another objection some have to Gallup — and to nearly every other pollster as
well, their methods of weighting for likely voters. The best test for these methods is the
final election predictions, and there Gallup has done very well. I haven't seen a recent
summary, but their error in 2000 was
about 2 percent, which is about
as good as a pollster can get, given sampling errors and last minute shifts.

(The smear in the MoveOn ad shows something about those running the organization, something
unpleasant, I would say. Here's how the New York Times puts it:

Saying that the polling is biased toward Republicans, the advertisement implies the reason is that
George Gallup Jr., the son of the poll's founder, is an evangelical Christian.

By the way, he is not even running the firm day to day.

As I understand it, MoveOn's founders made their fortune selling those "flying toaster" screen
savers back in the 1980s. I think I bought one as a present. If so, I apologize.

As a practical matter, I would take Gallup's results as being the most likely to be right for
the candidate choice, given their long term record of success, but I would not use their results
for party ID, because of when they ask that question.)

Shannon Love Versus The NYT: In this
post, I recommended looking at the map created by
Shannon Love, which showed that the attacks in Iraq were mostly confined to four provinces.
Yesterday, the
New York Times
looked at similar data and came to this gloomy conclusion.

Over the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks by insurgents have been directed against civilians
and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center
outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company
with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants.

The sweeping geographical reach of the attacks, from Nineveh and Salahuddin Provinces in the northwest
to Babylon and Diyala in the center and Basra in the south, suggests a more widespread resistance
than the isolated pockets described by Iraqi government officials.

Who is right? Shannon Love.

To see that, take a look at this point by point critique of the Times article, from another Chicago Boys
contributor, Sylvain Galineau, or at a
similar critique from "Wretchard" of
Belmont Club,
who finishes with this neat summary:

So everything checks out just as the New York Times article reported it. All the facts are
individually true, but Prime Minister Allawie's assertion that most provinces are "completely safe"
and that security prospects are bright are also supported by those same facts. Such is the
fog of war.

I should add that the Times reporters, James Glanz and Thom Shanker, may have written their
article in good faith, may not have intended to slant it. But I also think that they
would write it differently if a President Kerry was in the White House.

Senate Candidate George Nethercutt Attacks Patty Murray on her weakest point,
her dimwitted failure to understand the roots of terrorism. And he does it with an ad that
shows her infamous statement explaining the support for bin Laden in the Muslim world. Her
concluding sentences drew less attention than her claim that bin Laden had been building day
care centers, but deserve more.

He's made their lives better. We have not done that.

Bin Laden was, most of all, a supporter of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Does Patty Murray really
believe that the Taliban made life better for the people of Afghanistan? We have sent
billions in aid to the Muslim world. For example, Egypt, the largest Arab nation, has been
the second largest recipient of our foreign aid for many years. Does Patty Murray really
believe that our aid to Egypt and other Muslim countries has not made their lives better?
If so, why did she vote for it, over and over?

(Full disclosure: I've made a modest contribution to Nethercutt's campaign, partly because I like
him and partly because I have been embarrassed by Patty Murray for years. I'm sure she is a
a nice lady, and equally sure that she is not fit to be a senator. You can see more on Murray in
this post from January 2003.

The ad must be effective, as you can see from the outraged reactions from Murray supporters
here and
here. And I am
charmed by the argument that it is unfair to quote what Senator Murray said in a public meeting.)

Small St. Helens Eruption Predicted: Yesterday, the USGS scientists
raised their prediction from maybe to
probably.

The rumblings from Mount St. Helens intensified yesterday, leading federal scientists to raise
the volcanic alert level and warn that a small-to-moderate eruption is likely within the next
several days.

The event could fling rocks up to three miles from the volcano's crater and spew ash thousands
of feet into the air, but it wouldn't approach the magnitude of the cataclysmic 1980 eruption that
blew out the mountain's north side and killed 57 people, scientists said.
. . .
One explanation for what's happening now is that rainwater percolated into the dome, reacting
with hot rock to cause cracking, Moran said. That cracking may have created pathways to allow
some of the magma from 1998 to begin moving again.

Or at least to a "heightened possibility". (I may be in a minority on this point, but I
would prefer betting odds to vague phrases from the experts.)

Political point? Well, I can't help but note that any explosion would probably break a
number of pollution control laws, though not on the scale of the 1980 eruption. But then
St. Helens has been a scofflaw for many years, so that's nothing new.

Correction On Women's Participation: In this
post, I mentioned that it had taken decades for
women's voting levels to catch up to men's, and guessed that it hadn't happened until the
1960s. Actually, it wasn't until the 1980s, as I learned from this
David Hogberg post.
Here are the numbers from the Census Bureau table he points to.

Percent Voting, By Sex, 1964-2002

Year

Men

Women

1964

71.9

67.0

1966

58.2

53.0

1968

69.8

66.0

1970

56.8

52.7

1972

64.1

62.0

1974

46.2

43.4

1976

59.6

58.8

1978

46.6

45.3

1980

59.1

59.4

1982

48.7

48.4

1984

59.0

60.8

1986

45.8

46.1

1988

56.4

58.3

1990

44.6

45.4

1992

60.2

62.3

1994

44.7

45.3

1996

52.8

55.5

1998

41.4

42.4

2000

53.1

56.2

2002

41.4

43.0

(The base is the total population of voting age, not citizens, so the decline in participation is not
as great as it seems, since we have many more non-citizens now than in 1964.)

Though a lower percentage of men have voted in every election since 1984, I can't recall
seeing any get out the vote drives directed at men.

(As Hogberg notes, you still see articles claiming that women don't vote as often as men,
though to be fair, few would consider Vogue magazine, his example, an authoritative source on
voting statistics.

Because women live longer than men the total number of women voting probably
passed the total number of men voting earlier than 1984.)

Volcano Advisory For St. Helens: The dome inside the crater has
started to
swell.

Federal scientists raised the volcano warning at Mount St. Helens to the equivalent of an
orange alert this morning, as earthquake intensity increased and preliminary measurements showed
magma may be moving into the crater.
. . .
Overnight, the pace of earthquakes beneath the volcano more than doubled, to about four a minute,
said USGS seismologist Seth Moran. The size of the shaking also intensified, with several
quakes registering at magnitude 2 to 2.5 - strong enough to be felt by somebody who was standing
in the crater. Previously, most of the earthquakes ranged from magnitude 1 to 1.5.

A monitor installed Monday on the small dome inside the volcano's crater also detected about two
inches of upward bulging over the past 12 hours.

That means magma is almost certainly moving into the dome, making an eruption more likely.

So far no gases from any magma have been detected. By way of comparison, before the 1980
eruption, one side of St. Helens grew by 200 feet.

If you want to watch the mountain, you can do it
here, though the camera might not last
long in a major eruption.

More On Platform Promises: In a
post at the beginning of this month, I mentioned
Gerald Pomper's study of platform promises and summarized his findings as best I could from
memory. I have now found my copy of his book,
and can give you some specifics. (Embarrassingly, the book was in a pile of books
next to my desk, which explains why I couldn't find it in a search through my bookshelves.)

Pomper studied the Democratic and Republican party platforms from 1944 through 1964, extracting the
2,243 "future pledges" from the 12 platforms. How many did the parties keep? It depended
very much on who won the presidency, as it should.

Winning the Presidency, however, does make a considerable difference in platform fulfillment.
In all categories, the in-party achieves about four-fifths of its program, half again as much
as the losers. (p. 187)

Although Pomper does not put it this way, many of the promises that were not kept were promises
that required super majorities. At that time, for example, nearly every civil rights bill
required a two-thirds vote in the Senate, to break the inevitable filibuster. Promises
that require passing constitutional amendments face even higher barriers to fulfillment, which
is why the president does not have an item veto, though it has been in more than one
platform.

(You may wonder why the out party is able to fulfill some of its pledges. That's because
most of the pledges do not directly conflict with pledges in the other party's platform.
Many are are bipartisan, and many more are found only in one party's platform.)

So the parties are not perfect, but their promises do mean something. That's why I will
have more to say about the platforms before the election. And more about Pomper's
study of the platforms, which has other surprises that I have not mentioned.

Cop Killer For Kerry: America's most famous cop killer,
Mumia Abu-Jamal, has
endorsed John Kerry. Like the Communist party, he did so negatively.

"For millions of people, there exists in their minds, in their hearts a hunger for change,"
Abu-Jamal writes in the latest issue of Workers World. "That hunger is becoming a driving
force in the upcoming elections, and is being expressed in a way that can best be summed up:
'Anybody But Bush.'"

That should solidify the pro-Kerry vote at Washington's Evergreen College, where Mumia was an
honored speaker just a few years ago.

(For what it is worth, Mumia shares my skepticism about the support that a President Kerry
would be able to get from the French.

I am sure that there are people who, unlike Mumia, are enthusiastically for Kerry, rather than
just gloomily against Bush. I just haven't seen any, outside his immediate family —
and I am not entirely sure about Teresa.)

Worth Reading: Two great columns from David Brooks. In the
first, Brooks
eviscerates the UN
for its failure in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Confronted with the murder of 50,000 in Sudan, we eschewed all that nasty old unilateralism,
all that hegemonic, imperialist, go-it-alone, neocon, empire, coalition-of-the-coerced stuff.
Our response to this crisis would be so exquisitely multilateral, meticulously consultative,
collegially cooperative and ally-friendly that it would make John Kerry swoon and a million
editorialists nod in sage approval.

And so we Americans mustered our outrage at the massacres in Darfur and went to the United
Nations. And calls were issued and exhortations were made and platitudes spread like
béarnaise. The great hum of diplomacy signaled that the global community was whirring
into action.
. . .
The [UN] resolution passed, and it was a good day for alliance-nurturing and burden-sharing - for
the burden of doing nothing was shared equally by all. And we are by now used to the pattern.
Every time there is an ongoing atrocity, we watch the world community go through the same series of
stages: (1) shock and concern (2) gathering resolve (3) fruitless negotiation (4) pathetic inaction
(5) shame and humiliation (6) steadfast vows to never let this happen again.

The "never again" always comes. But still, we have all agreed, this sad cycle is better
than having some impromptu coalition of nations actually go in "unilaterally" and do something.
That would lack legitimacy! Strain alliances! Menace international law! Threaten
the multilateral ideal!

It's a pity about the poor dead people in Darfur. Their numbers are still rising, at
6,000 to 10,000 a month.

And it's a pity that Mary Mapes and Dan Rather care less about these deaths than whether
President Bush attended every meeting of the National Guard three decades ago.

That the UN is ineffectual in stopping most massacres is undeniable. That so many still
do not accept that fact is dismaying.

Conditions were horrible when Salvadorans went to the polls on March 28, 1982. The
country was in the midst of a civil war that would take 75,000 lives. An insurgent army
controlled about a third of the nation's territory. Just before election day, the insurgents
stepped up their terror campaign. They attacked the National Palace, staged highway assaults
that cut the nation in two and blew up schools that were to be polling places.

Despite such problems, the voters there went to the polls and went again two years later.
The success of those two elections undermined both the Marxist rebels and the right wing death
squads. Now, in part because San Salvador held these elections, the nation is at peace and
everyone in this hemisphere is better off for it.

Brooks uses this example to argue that imperfect elections in Afghanistan and Iraq — and
they will be imperfect — may be a big step forward for both of those nations.

It Was Sheer Accident, I am sure, that led the New York Times to bury
this story
on page C4.

Sales of new homes jumped 9.4 percent in August, higher than economists had expected and the
biggest gain since the end of 2000, the Commerce Department said yesterday.

Single-family home sales increased to a 1.184 million annual pace last month, led by surging
sales in the West and South, from a July rate of 1.082 million units, which was slower than first
estimated.

Just rich people buying those houses? No.

The median selling price in the United States dropped to $208,900 in August from $214,400 in July,
reflecting a greater percentage of homes built for less than $125,000, the Commerce Department
said.

Will Dan Rather make this one of his main stories? Of course — if he is as unbiased
as he says he is.

European Leaders Prefer Bush: That most European voters would prefer
John Kerry as president is no secret. (Possible exception: Poland.) That European
leaders may prefer Bush, quietly, is less well known. And I don't mean just the leaders of
the nations that backed Bush on the Iraq war, Tony Blair, Silvio Berlusconi, and the others.
No, I am also saying that French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerard Schröder
would prefer that Bush win in November. Why? Two reasons. First, John Kerry has
made it quite clear that he will be asking them to do more in Iraq if he is elected. And they
don't look forward to that idea.

A participant on the sidelines of talks in Berlin between Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and
Richard Holbrooke, a would-be secretary of state in a John Kerry presidency, told a story about the
meeting and the theme of how a Kerry-friendly Europe would leap to America's aid in bringing
stability to Iraq. (Or maybe hide under the bed.)

"Schröder," the American said, "asked Holbrooke what would Kerry do if he were elected.
Holbrooke replied one of the first things would be to get on the phone and invite him and President
Jacques Chirac to the White House. The chancellor laughed out loud. Then he said,
'That's what I was afraid of.'"

Because, after all, what's in it for him? The Chancellor must be diplomatic, but the
anti-Bush newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, can be more blunt.

So, suggesting that with Kerry's big Iraq statement under their belts it was now a good time for
the Allies to ask themselves who would be a better American president for them, Süddeutsche pointed
the question rhetorically at Gerhard Schröder, and then responded in his stead.

"The answer: Bush," the newspaper, a constant critic of the president, wrote.

As for the Democrat, Süddeutsche said Kerry "is suggesting that he can produce a little miracle
and seduce America's battered friends into high-yield performances along the lines of Washington's
wishes." For all of Kerry's opportunity to create a foreign policy with greater credibility
and legitimacy, that was not realistic, it said. Schöder couldn't send Bundeswehr troops to Iraq,
and there would be "no morning-after special gift for a President Kerry."

The unpopularity of President Bush, and Chirac's and Schröeder's aggressive stand against him, is
the only thing that gives the French and German leaders any sort of credibility in the eyes of their
own people. Both head otherwise unpopular governments pursuing largely failed economic
policies at home. In particular, anti-Bush sentiment keeps alive the French dream of uniting
Europe in opposition to the United States--Chirac's famous counterweight to the superpower.

They need Bush.

In any case, the French governing elite would surely miss having someone to scorn in Washington.
It feeds their innate self-belief and superiority complex.

In other words, attacking Bush allows them to distract voters from their failed policies.
(That's also a popular strategy in much of the Muslim world, which is filled with governments
that have failed, often for decades.) There is one problem with the strategy for European
governments. Blaming Bush may allow you to win an election or two, but it just postpones the
dealing with the real problems. The collapse of support for Schröder and his party
in Germany since his narrow victory illustrates that point convincingly.

(There is one European government that might feel it would gain from Bush's defeat —
Tony Blair's Labour government in Britain. Although Blair himself may prefer Bush, it is
no secret that many in his government feel they would be stronger if they could sever the
connection. And, as a matter of practical politics, I would have to agree that a Bush
defeat might help Blair politically.

I have been unable to decide whether Kerry really believes that he will be able to get substantial
support from other nations, as he continues to say on the campaign trail. It is an
implausible claim, but he shows no sign of realism on the subject.)

Step Up To The Line and get it right. I often see "toe the
line" replaced by "tow the line", which is understandable, because of the homonym, but
incorrect. My American Heritage dictionary gives these definitions for toe the line:

1. To adhere to rules or doctrine conscientiously; conform. 2. Sports & Games. To
touch a mark or line with the toe or hands in readiness for the start of a race or competition

I think the first meaning may have come from the practice of requiring students
to line up on a physical line for order, but I may be wrong about that.

As is often the case, visualizing the metaphor helps avoid errors. When I try to picture
someone towing the line, I don't get anything.

Visualizing can also help you avoid disastrous metaphors, such as
this one.

Is it me, or have the feminists in this country completely gone off their rockers?

Jane Fonda was recently in New York at a star-studded event designed to increase voter registration
for women. The occasion? The "Vaginas Vote, Chicks Rock" gala at the Apollo Theater, which
was billed as "a night of entertainment and political empowerment."

Are you kidding? "Vaginas vote"?

I'll leave it up to you to decide whether you want to visualize that one. Though I must
note that it would require different voting technology.

Worth Reading: This forum
post on what
happened when a graduate student in math education came up with the wrong result in his
research.

The truth was that constructivism was proven to be a worthless pathetic failure. Of course,
nobody ever gets a thesis accepted and published by bucking established theory, so I watered down my
conclusion to a much weaker (but still true) statement: "No evidence was found that the
constructivist methods are better than the traditional method." Professor read my first draft
and turned it down outright. He told me to re-analzye my data so that I could state the
constructivism was better or I would never graduate. So I walked out of his office, got an
incomplete on my thesis (which eventually became an F) and never graduated.

If you are not up with fads in education, you may need an explanation of "constructivism".
Briefly, it is the idea that students should not learn mathematics from the teachers, but should
construct their own mathematics, under the guidance of the instructor. Think I am making that
up? Here's a
semi-official definition:

Students need to construct their own understanding of each mathematical concept, so that the
primary role of teaching is not to lecture, explain, or otherwise attempt to 'transfer' mathematical
knowledge, but to create situations for students that will foster their making the necessary mental
constructions. A critical aspect of the approach is a decomposition of each mathematical
concept into developmental steps following a Piagetian theory of knowledge based on observation of,
and interviews with, students as they attempt to learn a concept

Although we must treat a post on an open forum, written under a pseudonym, with some skepticism,
the story sounds entirely plausible to me. (And if you scroll up and down, you will
find similar horror stories.) Mere facts often can not compete with a beautiful theory,
especially in education schools.

(For more on the debate between proponents of "constructivist" and
traditional methods of math instruction, see this informative
UPI article. Note
that computational skills began to decline when constructivist approaches were
introduced.

What Kind Of Intellectual Standards Do Leftist Professors Have? You
can get a
sample here, in which a poster at Crooked
Timber, Henry Farrell, proposes this for the quote of the day:
`

Relying on Free Republic losers to "fact-check" the media is like relying on the proverbial roomful
of typing monkeys, except with somewhat more feral howling and feces-flinging.

Who can not be impressed by an argument at that intellectual level? (Although it might have
been even better if the author had used the traditional "poopy head", instead of the monkeys
metaphor.)

Since you may not know him, I will add that it is
"Professor" Henry Farrell who found that quotation so
wonderful. Professor Farrell teaches political science to college kids at George Washington
University. I hope he will not take it amiss if I say that Washington had higher standards
than he does.

(Not familiar with Free Republic? It is a free wheeling conservative site with endless discussions
of political subjects. You can find nearly every opinion there, some sound, some not.
Their standards
are higher than those in many academic departments.

Free Republic expects users to follow a few simple posting guidelines (described below) and by
posting to the forum you and others agree to abide by them. While Free Republic is not edited
or censored, it does reserve the right to remove any postings that are considered inappropriate.
Examples of inappropriate posts are those that are off-subject or contain advertising, pornography,
obscene material, racist material, Nazi (or other hate group) material, materials promoting violence,
threats or illegal acts, etc.

Can we find pornography, obscene material, racist material, hate group material, and materials promoting
violence in many academic departments? Yes, to all.

And if you are wondering why Free Republic was being attacked, it is simple. A poster there was
the first to note the problems with the forged documents used by Dan Rather. If you hate
"freepers", the people who post at Free Republic, that can be hard to take.)

In her latest television ads, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray talks as though she's got a plan to lower
health-insurance costs.

Call it the Costco solution. The 30-second spots open with Murray standing in a warehouse
full of boxes. She says she favors allowing small businesses and individuals to "join together"
to create insurance-buying pools with "combined purchasing power" that would cut insurance premiums.

It sounds nice. But Murray opposes major legislation before Congress that would promote
insurance pools similar to those her ad describes. And though she serves on a Senate
health-care panel, Murray has not proposed any alternative plan.

The ad is typical of Murray's campaign. It looks and sounds good, but is detached from Murray's
dismal record.

I have been impressed by the political skill behind her commercials —
and depressed by just how far they wander from the facts. Another Murray ad, for example,
attacks her opponent, Congressman George Nethercutt, as a professional politician. (His first
elected office was the House seat he won in 1994. Before that, he had been a lawyer in
private practice for almost two decades.) And the ad claims that Nethercutt "moved" to
Bellevue. (He rented an apartment there for a few months to make it easier to
campaign in this area.) The ad ends with a smear, saying that Nethercutt will do anything to be
elected. Her other ads, at least those I have seen, show similar disregard for mere facts.

(If you would like to see the ad discussed in the article, you can find it at
Patty Murray's site. Hilariously, the site includes
a quotation from Bob Seward of Spokane, who says he is voting for Murray because of her "wisdom".
At present, the site does not seem to have the attack ad against Nethercutt.)

Are Democrats Unpatriotic? Democratic leaders, notably Howard
Dean, have been attacking Republicans as unpatriotic — while claiming that Republicans
were calling them unpatriotic. I don't know of any important Republican leader
who has called Democrats unpatriotic, though it is easy to find talk show hosts who have.

But are Democrats unpatriotic? Most aren't, but some are, especially in — no surprise
here —
Seattle.

The same week Penny L. Ratliff bought the Cat's Eye Cafe in West Seattle last October she put an
American flag out front.

It meant what it has meant to her ever since the 56-year-old learned to recite the Pledge of
Allegiance watching the Seattle kiddie show "Romper Room." It meant freedom.
. . .
For most of the ensuing year, the former Sears parts and repair manager has been busy getting the
little hole-in-the-wall cafe under control and helping her daughter, Dorothy Young, run the
kitchen. She's been much too busy to ponder what conclusions customers and passers-by may be
drawing from the Stars and Stripes in the window.

But last Sunday, after she seated two newcomers near the window, she got a shock that still rattles
her. Clearing the table, she found their comment card saying that the food was great and the
service was, too. But they found the flag in the window offensive.

"If I'd seen the card before they left we would definitely have had a discussion," Penny said.

A day later, another customer told her that Democrats may find the flag offensive because it's
become such a "politicized symbol."

It has always been a "politicized symbol", of course, with different meanings for different
people. Many on the left, including some Democrats, do not see the flag as a
symbol of freedom and don't like this nation enough to be patriotic.

(I have to wonder about Susan Paynter's motivation for writing this column. The Seattle PI
columnist is so stalwart in her defense of leftist causes that she may not see the American flag
as a symbol of freedom. But she does not want Democrats to say that, at least until after the
election is over.

And I should add that West Seattle is one of the more reasonable parts of the city, though much less
so than it was before busing drove out so many working class and middle class families.)

Commies For Kerry: They don't like Kerry much, but they have
endorsed him,
since they like Bush even less.

John Kerry's numbers are down across the board. He's hurting in some of the swing states,
he's hurting with veterans and with soccer moms - now called "security moms."

Even some of the wind-surfers have their doubts about the guy.

I'm looking at all this, and I'm thinking that he's bottomed out and it can't get any worse.

Then I heard that the head of the Communist Party of the United States of America was coming to
town [Des Moines] to endorse the liberal senator from Massachusetts.

Not that the "mainstream" news media will give this endorsement much attention.

(One oddity: The Communist leader, Sam Webb, held his meeting in a Methodist church. At
one time most Methodist leaders would have thought Communism was incompatible with their faith.

And there's an interesting confession in the column, though unintended, I am sure. Rob Borsellino
found Webb a better spokesman for Democratic causes than the Democrats.

Borsellino seems unaware that the Communists have endorsed the Democratic candidate in previous
elections. They once ran their own candidates; now they routinely endorse the Democratic
candidates. I'm not sure just when they changed their strategy.)

Worth A Look: Shannon Love's
map of casualties in Iraq.
What Love shows is that we don't have problems in Iraq; we have problems in the "Sunni triangle",
one region of Iraq.

I mapped all 58 U.S. combat fatalities for the month of September to date using data made available
at GlobalSecurity.org. The map color codes the number of U.S. fatalities resulting from enemy
action in each of Iraq's 18 provinces. Only four of the provinces had any U.S. fatalities.
14 of the provinces had zero fatalities. (The British down in Basra had zero fatalities from
combat in September).

That's a much smaller problem than the major media may have led you to think. This gives us
reason for hope, even in the near term. The regional nature of the conflict also shows who our
principal enemies are, the Sunni tribes that ruled Iraq for centuries, even though they are a
minority of the population, about 20 percent.

For contrast, see this gloomy
Washington Post article
and this approving post
on the article from history professor Juan Cole. Both Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Post and
Professor Cole are convinced that we have a problem in all of Iraq (except the Kurdish areas).
Love's map refutes both, convincingly.

(For more on the next steps on the pacification of Iraq, see this piece by Lieutenant General
David H. Petraeus,
who is running the transition from American to Iraqi forces.

In recent months, I have observed thousands of Iraqis in training and then watched as they have
conducted numerous operations. Although there have been reverses -- not to mention horrific
terrorist attacks -- there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the
load for their own security, something they are keen to do.
. . .
Nonetheless, there are reasons for optimism. Today approximately 164,000 Iraqi police and soldiers
(of which about 100,000 are trained and equipped) and an additional 74,000 facility protection
forces are performing a wide variety of security missions.
. . .
Most important, Iraqi security forces are in the fight -- so much so that they are suffering
substantial casualties as they take on more and more of the burdens to achieve security in their
country. Since Jan. 1 more than 700 Iraqi security force members have been killed, and
hundreds of Iraqis seeking to volunteer for the police and military have been killed as well.
. . .
Numbers alone cannot convey the full story. The human dimension of this effort is crucial.
The enemies of Iraq recognize how much is at stake as Iraq reestablishes its security forces.
Insurgents and foreign fighters continue to mount barbaric attacks against police stations,
recruiting centers and military installations, even though the vast majority of the population
deplores such attacks. Yet despite the sensational attacks, there is no shortage of qualified
recruits volunteering to join Iraqi security forces.

If Iraqis thought they were joining a losing cause, would they be volunteering in such numbers?

As I have said all along, in the end, Iraqis must free Iraq. It looks as though that is
beginning to happen.)

Seismic energy releases from Mount St. Helens have been increasing for days now, cranking
up to a level not seen since 1986, when the volcano's last dome-building eruption occurred.

"Since this morning, the energy releases have been slowly but steadily ramping up," said Jeff
Wynn, chief scientist at the Cascade Volcano Observatory operated by the U.S. Geological Survey in
Vancouver, Wash. -- about 50 miles south of the 8,364-foot peak and 140 miles south of Seattle.

This increased activity has led the local TV stations to show us interesting pictures of the
mountain, from both the 1980 eruption and the present. There are links to some
video clips on the KIRO site, if you want to see for yourself.

15,000 Votes: That's how many votes John Fund thinks were stolen
from George W. Bush in Palm Beach county, in the 2000 election. Here's the summary, and some
of the evidence, from Fund's book,
Stealing Elections.

In the confusion and chaos after the 2000 election, an anomaly occurred that many people believe
ended up costing George W. Bush thousands of votes in Palm Beach. It appears that as many
as 15,000 votes may have been altered and subtracted in Palm Beach county.
. . .
George W. Bush's 152,969 votes in Palm Beach in 2000 was such a weak showing that the losing
Republican candidate for the U. S. Senate, Bill McCollum, won both more votes (154,642) and a higher
percentage of the vote in Palm Beach than Bush did, even though statewide McCollum lost by 284,000
votes (four percentage points) and Bush, as we know, came out ahead.
. . .
But what really got some Republicans and outside observers scratching their heads after the recount
chaos subsided was the fact that George W. Bush had been outpolled by the combined vote of the four
Republicans running for Congress in Palm Beach, an even more unusual occurrence.
. . .
Palm Beach produced 19,120 overvotes that night, a 4.4 percent error rate — almost ten times
the error rate of 0.4 percent in the rest of Florida, or indeed of any other large jurisdiction that
used punch-card ballots other than Chicago.
. . .
Only in Palm Beach County did Gore gain 750 votes in the initial post-election recount and Bush almost
nothing. In 50 out of the 67 Florida counties the total change was less than seven
votes, and in 63 of the 67 counties the total change was less than thirty votes either way.
. . .
In every precinct in Palm Beach where Gore got more votes than there are registered Democrats,
Bush received less than 60 percent of the registered Republican votes. In no
precinct in Palm Beach did Bush win more than 80 percent of the registered Republicans
overall.
. . .
I was told by two former law enforcement officers and a poll worker that they believe that
ballot tampering took place after the polls had closed and the poll watchers had gone home.
(pp. 35-37)

The statistical evidence for ballot tampering is overwhelming. And there is this suggestive
point: Palm Beach was nearly the last county in Florida to report. As I have mentioned
before, it is standard practice to hold back results until you know how many votes you need to
steal. And I should add that other Florida counties controlled by Democrats also produced
"anomalies" during the voting, the count, the first recount, and the second recount.

There are three reasons why I give so much coverage to vote fraud here. I think it is a
growing problem, I think it threatens the very foundations of democracy, and I think that we
just missed having a presidential election stolen in 2000. (I should add that I do not
think anyone from Gore's campaign had anything to do with the theft in Palm Beach.)

Finally, one bitter point about the media. Fund and others have tried to interest
journalists at "mainstream" news organizations in the Palm Beach vote story. None have
thought it worthwhile to study the near theft of a presidential election.

(How were Bush ballots ruined? Most likely by a person, or persons, taking a small metal
rod, or even a nail, and punching it through the Gore hole in the punch card ballots. This
would not change any Gore ballots, but would convert Bush ballots to overvotes. It would
not take long to spoil even 15,000 ballots that way.

There is one mystery about the spoiled ballots. If a group with access to the Palm
Beach punch cards did spoil Bush ballots, why didn't they spoil enough to tip the
election? I can see two possible answers to that question. The vote thieves
miscalculated, which would be easy to do in the confusion of the Florida election, or they
guessed before they had the full results from the rest of the state.

For more on the 200 Florida election, see this Q&A I did early
in 2001.)

Another Routine Case Of Vote Fraud: This story of
attempted vote fraud
in the Cleveland area is drearily familiar.

More than 1,000 voter registration forms and absentee ballot requests may be fraudulent in Lake and
Summit counties, where investigations of irregularities are broadening.

Lake County Sheriff Daniel Dunlap said Thursday that he will investigate an attempt to register
a dead person and other possibly fraudulent documents that were submitted to the Lake County Board of
Elections.

One of the organizations that turned in the apparently fraudulent registrations and applications for, naturally,
absentee ballots is familiar, too. It is the anti-Bush group, Americans Coming Together, or ACT.

- 7:49 AM, 26 September 2004

More: As I should have mentioned, ACT's principal financial backer is
George Soros.

In just a few short months in 2003, Soros pledged $5 million to America Coming Together, $4.5
million to the Joint Victory Campaign and $2.5 million to the MoveOn.org Voter Fund.

If Soros has condemned ACT's efforts to register illegal voters or to get illegal absentee ballots,
I missed it. For Soros, any votes against Bush, legal or not, would appear to be
acceptable. Ironically, Soros was a big backer of the McCain-Feingold "campaign finance
reform". Given what has happened since, I think we are entitled to wonder about his
motivations. Was he trying to rig the system to give himself more power? Sure
looks like it.

"Every American now knows that there's something really screwy about George Bush and the National
Guard, and they know that John Kerry was not the war hero we thought he was," said Douglas Brinkley,
the historian and author of a friendly biography of Mr. Kerry's war years, acknowledging that Mr.
Kerry's opponents had succeeded in raising questions about his service.

And about Brinkley's book. I have not seen a full statement from Brinkley on the subject, but
it seems clear that he now disbelieves parts of his own book, that he has concluded, to use his own
words, that "John Kerry was not the war hero we thought he was". That isn't an endorsement
of every criticism the SwiftVets have made, but it is a concession that they have scored some
hits.

(Reports I have seen suggest that reading Brinkley's book inspired the SwifVets to
do their first ad. They had always objected to Kerry's anti-war activities, but they had
given him a pass on what he said about his service in Vietnam. When they saw what he had
told Brinkley about his time in Vietnam, they were so annoyed that they began to check that part
of his story against their own memories and found conflicts.)

- 9:10 AM, 25 September 2004

Maybe Not: Brinkley says the New York Times
misunderstood him
and that he was referring to the public's perceptions, not his own. Maybe. Brinkley, a
supporter of Kerry, has not been as forthright as he might have been about the controversies over
Kerry's record. And it is understandable, though not necessarily forgivable, that he might not
want to admit he erred in his book.

On the other hand, Washington Post columnist Colbert King, who is not as committed to Kerry as
Brinkley, now has
doubts
about Kerry's record, especially as a war protester. Here's what a classmate of King's
at Howard, Rodney Coleman, told him:

I served my 13 months in combat. Returned in 1972 with the Bronze Star and the Vietnamese
Technical Services Honor Medal to a very anti-Vietnam America. [Harry] "Butch" Robinson, Denny
[Dennis] Hightower, and many more that you know did the same. We endured the pain of
separation from our loved ones, were frightened when the rockets came in to camp and lives were
lost. But we were never unfit for command.

Kerry still hasn't satisfied me and many others. . . . It's September and I'm still conflicted.
Speaking for myself, it is NOT enough that he served!

Coleman is not a Republican or conservative. He is a black Democrat who served as
assistant secretary of the Air Force under Bill Clinton. When Kerry has trouble holding
the votes of that kind of veteran, he is in serious trouble.

(I have been baffled all through the campaign by Kerry's unwillingness to apologize to veterans
for his extreme statements in 1971. It is such an obvious move for a man who wants to
be president so badly. Is he simply unwilling to admit error? I don't know.)

Kirkland Kayaking: We have had some good days here recently, as
you can seen in this picture, taken about a week ago.

By the way, ocean going kayaks like the one shown in the picture are quite easy to handle,
much stabler than the kayaks used in rivers, and much easier to paddle than canoes. An
absolute beginner can go out in one and have fun, after just a few minutes of instruction.

(The large ship in the background puzzles many visitors. It was a NOAA research vessel.
When NOAA dropped it, no one else wanted it, It was headed for the scrapyard when it was
bought to serve as a breakwater to protect the boats nearby. It has even been renamed
"Protector". In this area, where views are precious, some objected to its presence,
though I rather like its looks. Once in a while, I see a bald eagle perched at the top
of the mast.)

More On "Security Moms": Yesterday, I argued that Bush's gains
among women were similar to his gains among men, that he was gaining support from both sexes,
and by about the same amounts. There may be "security moms", who are supporting Bush because
of the war on terror, but there are just as many "security dads", who are doing the same.
The answers to the open ended question posed by Gallup to Bush supporters in their
last national poll, "What
Are the Most Important One or Two Reasons Why You Would Vote for George W. Bush?", provide some
support for my argument, but do not settle the question. (To access the analysis, you
will need to subscribe, but you can, as I did, sign up for a free 30 day trial.)

Five categories drew double digit responses. The first, "Leadership quality/better candidate
for the job", was mentioned more by men (28 percent) than by women (16 percent). The
second, "Doing a good job/satisfied with job performance", was mentioned more by women (30
percent) than by men (25 percent). The third, "War issues/stance on terrorism/national
security", was mentioned by about the same number of times by men (22 percent) as by women (20
percent). The same was true of the fourth category, "Honesty/integrity/ethics", mentioned
by 17 percent of the men and 18 percent of the women.

Now we might say that the fact that almost as many women mentioned security shows that Bush has
gained with them on that issue, except for the differences in two other categories. The fifth
category, "Good moral values/religious beliefs" was mentioned twice as often by women (22 percent)
as by men (10 percent). And, if we scan farther down, 7 percent of the women supporting
Bush mentioned abortion as a reason, but only 4 percent of the men. If Bush has gained more
among women than men, it may be more because of his open religiosity and his opposition to
abortion than because of the war on terror.

(Let me review some points from yesterday, just to be clear. The current gender gap is
about the same size now as it has been since it began in 1980, about 6-8 percent. I think
the much larger gap in 2000 was probably an anomaly caused by the story about Bush's drunk
driving conviction. So, although Bush has gained relatively among women since then, he
made most of those gains before 9/11.

The Kerry supporters answers to the parallel question provide an interesting contrast.
They are less likely to mention war and terrorism (13 percent), and almost ignore abortion (1
percent) and Kerry's religious beliefs (less than 1 percent). What is important to them?
First, of course, they are unhappy with Bush (18 percent); after that come Kerry's agenda
(13 percent), economic issues (11 percent), and the Democratic party (11 percent).

It is a little startling to see economic issues so far down on the list for Democrats, and not even
among the top issues for Republicans, though the "good job" category must include some
supporters of Bush's economic programs.)

- 10:42 AM, 24 September 2004

Still More: Noam Schieber comes to
similar conclusions, though he
overstates both the average gender gap and his conclusion. It is not that there are no
"security moms"; it is that polls do not show that women have moved disproportionately to
Bush. (You'll have to register to see the article, and The New Republic makes it painful.)

This AP poll
shows the gender gap alive and well. Bush leads overall by 7 percent, but by 17 percent among
men.

John Kerry Believes, or at least says he believes, in the Patty Murray
theory of terrorism, that its roots are in poverty, disease, and hunger. This is remarkable,
considering the evidence against it. Like Senator Murray, Kerry ignores the facts
about the best known terrorists; Osama bin Laden and Mohamed Atta may have had problems, but
poverty, disease, and hunger were not among them. And he ignores the formal studies done
on terrorists that show that they tend to be better off than those around them. The
leaders of the 9/11 terrorists became fanatics while studying in German universities, and most others have
similar backgrounds. And Kerry ignores what the terrorists say, that they are motivated by
extreme Islamic beliefs, not a concern about poverty, disease, and hunger. The Taliban, after all,
were responsible for much poverty, disease, and hunger, and the Islamic terrorists never saw anything
wrong with their rule, quite the contrary.

For Kerry to believe in the Patty Murray theory of terrorism at this date shows that he has not been paying
attention to the evidence, or that he is impervious to it, or that he does not have the mental
capacity to understand it, or some combination of the three. I am inclined to think that the
second is the main reason, that Kerry simply will not accept evidence that does not fit into his
rather narrow world view. But I can no longer dismiss the third. After all, the
theory's most famous proponent, Senator Murray, has won the "not a rocket scientist" award, given to
the dullest senator, multiple times. Perhaps, despite all the talk of his intelligence,
Senator Kerry is just not that bright. (Those who have been watching how he has managed
his campaign will not find that argument totally implausible.)